Timecrimes (Los Cronocrimenes) – Director: Nacho Vigalondo
“Timecrimes” is a Spanish film where a seemingly ordinary, middle-aged man, has his life turned upside down one day while sitting in his back garden. But as you watch the film, you have to wonder if where it begins is really the beginning, because there seems to be a few things that you won’t realize until later.
So, as I said, Hector is sitting in the back garden, after having returned home from a shopping trip and taken a nap. He’s received a rather odd telephone call where the caller hung up and has rung the number back and gotten a strange answering machine… but no matter, that’s forgotten for the moment as he sits in the garden and spots a naked woman in the woods. Now, his wife has said she will go to the store to get something for dinner, and after she leaves, Hector wanders into the woods in search of this woman, only to find that she seems to be unconscious now, or worse. As he reaches for her to see if she’s OK, he’s stabbed in the arm by a man with a bandage over his face, and flees into the woods away from him, eventually reaching a chain-link fence, which he tries to climb (but knocks over) and the he finds himself at a sort of house, where he breaks a window trying to get in. Once inside he’s guided to a silo by a man he manages to raise on a two-way radio, and all the while the man with the bandaged face is in pursuit. Once Hector is inside the silo, the man tells him to hide in this odd receptacle, and when he emerges…..
Well, let’s just say that the man failed to tell Hector that he has entered a time machine. And he’s now back earlier in the day, looking at his own house with binoculars, and seeing himself going about the chores he had gone about earlier. Of course, he’s a bit alarmed.
As the film goes on, it seems as though there are not only two Hectors, there are three, and he may well have had a part in the initial experiment (or accident) himself, but either does not remember or realize it.
There are various scenarios that are played out from multiple perspectives, and there are realizations that the pursuer and the pursued are perhaps one and the same person, only in different incarnations, just to give your poor tired brain something to try to think about. Of course, Hector thinks that if he can just get rid of the other Hectors, that all will be well, but by that time you’ll long have given up on trying to figure out who the original one is, and that is, if you could ever be sure to begin with. And Hector has been warned that confronting his other “selves” is dangerous. But since things are a bit out of control already, what does he have to lose?
For all its complications and twists, this is actually rather a simple film. Only 4 cast members, not really a lot of special effects, and fairly simple sets. It’s the actual story that will blow your mind in this. The film is also not without humor, as Hector is a bit accident-prone, and that may also be a hint as to how this all got started in the first place, but that isn’t ever revealed. I will say that this is not a film where you can be multi-tasking while you watch. You have to pay close attention, and even then, you may still be a bit lost, but stick with it, it’s a mind-f*** of a film.
There is a US remake due next year (2011), but don’t wait for that, see this one instead. And, it IS in Spanish, but you can also watched it dubbed in English.
